Chained to Dust

Versailles was not just a palace. It was a performance. A grand illusion of gold and grandeur, crafted to conceal the iron fist beneath the silk glove.

From the outside, the estate gleamed like a crown bathed in amber light, perched amidst gardens that obeyed symmetry like a prayer. Marble fountains whispered in ancient tongues, and rose gardens bloomed with a cruelty so precise it felt rehearsed. Everything at Versailles was curated, measured, rehearsed-including the people.

Arielle Delacroix stood at the edge of the east balcony, where morning light glazed the world in fragile gold. Her profile cut sharp against the frost-hazed horizon, chin tilted in defiance or perhaps exhaustion. She wore a high-necked ivory dress, pearls stitched into the collar like shackles disguised as beauty.

To the world, she was ethereal. A living portrait. The kind of girl poets ruined themselves for. Every movement she made was deliberate, composed; her silence was not born of meekness, but of mastery.

And yet, behind the thick-lashed eyes and the porcelain skin, was a soul that had learned to fold in on itself.

Arielle was not born to breathe. She was raised to endure.

Inside the halls of Versailles, freedom was a myth spoken of in oil paintings. Her footsteps echoed on marble floors that had once carried the weight of kings, yet each step was monitored, measured, judged. She knew which fork to use for each course, how to weep without sound, how to smile without warmth.

She had mastered the art of existing without truly living.

Every day, she was polished and displayed like one of the estate's treasured antiques. Every night, she closed her eyes beneath silk sheets and dreamed not of escape, but of forgetting. The crushing weight of legacy. The suffocating perfection demanded by the Delacroix name. Her father, Jean-Luc Delacroix, ruled their world from the shadows. A king without a crown, yet feared in palaces and parliaments alike.

And she, his only daughter, was a vessel.

A symbol.

A chess piece.

No one spoke freely in Versailles. Words were currency, and secrets-stockpiled like weapons. Even the chandeliers, with their thousand crystal eyes, felt like spies of the house.

"You were late to breakfast, Arielle." Her aunt's voice coiled like perfume in the air behind her.

Arielle didn't turn. She didn't need to.

"I wasn't hungry," she replied, tone light as spun glass.

"Hungry or not, a Delacroix appears on time. You know this."

Yes. She knew. She had known since she was six, the first time her schedule had been written in Latin and inked in red.

Her aunt's heels clicked away, sharp and impatient.

Left alone once more, Arielle let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She pressed her hand to the marble balustrade, its chill biting into her skin. The cold grounded her. Reminded her that she was real, even if her life felt scripted.

Somewhere below, the gardeners moved like shadows, pruning roses that bled too brightly. Somewhere inside, servants prepared for tonight's gala. Another masquerade of politics disguised as celebration.

And she? She would wear a dress that weighed more than her fears. She would dance with men who looked at her like acquisition, not affection. And she would smile.

Because a Delacroix does not falter.

But behind the smile, behind the satin and sapphires, was a girl who counted stars at night and whispered names to the moon-names of people she'd never meet, of cities she might never see.

Arielle did not long for love. Love, in her world, was a liability.

She longed for air.

Real, wild air. The kind that didn't smell of rose oil and expectation.

And though she didn't know it yet, her breathless wish would soon be answered-not with kindness, but with fire.

For Rafael Volkov was already on his way.

And with him, he carried winter.

By noon, the halls of Versailles swelled with the subtle chaos of preparation. Florists passed silently with armfuls of winter peonies; housekeepers glided like ghosts, polishing banisters that already gleamed; and silverware was counted twice, though it had never once gone missing.

Arielle watched the familiar ballet unfold from behind the lace curtains of the Solarium. This was routine-so carefully orchestrated it felt like a recurring dream. But today, there was something different in the air. A shift too subtle for the staff to name, yet too loud for Arielle to ignore.

She felt it in the hush between the clock's chime and the echo of a servant's footfall. In the rare glances exchanged between maids. In the way even her governess, Madame Chevalier-usually as firm as a marble bust-had knocked twice before entering her room that morning, eyes darting to the floor before she spoke.

Something was coming.

The envelope arrived at precisely 12:47 p.m.

It was delivered not by a servant, but by one of her father's personal aides-a silent man in a charcoal suit with no name and no presence, who bowed slightly before placing the letter upon the gold-inlaid table beside her untouched lunch. The seal on the envelope was unfamiliar: not the crest of Delacroix, but one older, almost regal.

Arielle stared at it, her breath catching in her chest.

Provence.

The word came to her before she even touched the parchment. She could feel the warmth of its sun-drenched hills just from the memory alone-lavender fields, citadel towns, and vineyards coiled like stories in the soil. But more than that, she remembered the other part of Provence. The darker one. The ancestral château nestled in the cliffs, overlooking the Rhône like a hawk with blood-tipped wings.

It was where she was born. And where her father never let her return.

Her fingers trembled as she broke the wax seal.

The invitation was handwritten in the ornate, almost calligraphic script of high nobility-curved and precise, the kind of writing that required generations of etiquette to master.

> The House of Delacroix is cordially invited to the Royal Winter Masquerade to be held at Château de Lys, Provence, on the eve of the Winter Solstice. The presence of Mademoiselle Arielle Delacroix is formally requested-for presentation to the Crowned Houses of Europe and introduction as Heiress Presumptive of the Delacroix Lineage.